


iscariot

by justahufflepuff



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Implied/Referenced Torture, POV Peter Pettigrew, Psychological Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-23
Updated: 2019-07-23
Packaged: 2020-07-11 20:54:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19934344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justahufflepuff/pseuds/justahufflepuff
Summary: Peter Pettigrew never considered himself a disciple.Then again, James Potter didn't exactly count as religion.A god, maybe. But then they had all thought themselves gods once. Fresh out of school and newly invincible. Back in the beginning. Back before they had ever seen anyone die.But he was getting ahead of himself.





	iscariot

**Author's Note:**

  * For [VendelynSilverhawk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/VendelynSilverhawk/gifts).



{title: Iscariot}

Peter Pettigrew never considered himself a disciple. 

Then again, James Potter didn't exactly count as religion. 

A god, maybe. But then they had all thought themselves gods once. Fresh out of school and newly invincible. Back in the beginning. Back before they had ever seen anyone die. 

But he was getting ahead of himself. 

Clinging to thoughts of James, young victorious and beautiful, would not deter anyone long. Not when the enemy could pick apart his thoughts one by one. They'd find what he had buried in the detritus of his mind. They'd find what they wanted and then nothing would matter. 

James Potter did not count as a religion. 

But Peter Pettigrew could martyr himself for less. 

*  
It had started, like so many other parts of Peter's life, sitting on a four-post bed surrounded by family he didn't know yet and terrified they would hate him the moment he opened his mouth. 

For Gryffindors they didn't seem all that brave. Not most of them anyways. 

"You actually did it!" The boy with glasses and hair even worse than Peter's had practically climbed all over the shaking, defiant boy who could only be Sirius Black. Even Peter, raised and educated by Squibs, knew a monumental Sorting when he saw one. One of the Sacred Ancient lines, defying tradition. He didn't know whether to find it admirable or terrifying. He'd have hard luck doing anything to impress that boy. 

"Sod off it, James. They'll probably realize their mistake tomorrow and cart me down to the dungeons to live with my dear cousins."

Peter noted that Sirius did nothing to push the other boy (James, he told himself) away. 

"They will not. Sorting's final. No one wants to mess with ancient magic like the Hat. You're a lion now!" 

Peter glanced over at their other roommate, the shrinking boy in too big sweaters that flinched at James' noise and bluster. 

"The Sorting Hat is ancient magic?" Sweaters asked. 

"Oh yeah, loads ancient. It's supposed to have belonged to Gryffindor himself! Another reason we're the best House." James said, puffing out his scrawny chest with such pride that Peter self-consciously covered his own. "Sorry," James continued. "I don't think I caught your name. You got Sorted before me." 

Sweaters opened his mouth to speak only to have Sirius beat him to it. 

"He's called Remus Lupin." Sirius said as he finally shrugged James off his lap. 

Sweaters (Remus) looked amazed. 

"What?" Sirius asked, defensive. "I pay attention. And he's got a weird name." 

"You're named after a star." Peter pointed out, surprising himself deeply as he did so. "How's that more normal than the founder of Rome?" 

"He's got a point, mate." James said as Peter flushed. "He's really got a good point." 

"Oh, get stuffed." Sirius told James, sounding all too much like Pete's aunt when her footie team lost a match. Though his aunt didn't blush when her team lost. 

"I wouldn't mind getting named after a star." Remus said, his voice as quiet as the rest of him. 

"Better than my dad, his name is Fleamont." James said as he patted Sirius bracingly on the shoulder. 

Peter snorted in laughter and James looked right at him. 

"Oh," James said. "You're Peter, right? Got Sorted right before me?"

"Yes?" Not entirely sure why he made that a question Peter fidgeted and tried not to fold under the attention. 

"You dropped this on your way to the stool. Sorry, in all the fuss I forgot until just now." 

James crossed over to Peter and handed him a carefully folded and only mildly wrinkled piece of paper. 

Opening it up, Peter's heart did a weird combination of a swoop and a jump. It was the picture his sister Elsie had drawn him just before he left for the train. He'd meant to save it and put it up where the others couldn't see. Until just now he'd thought he had somehow dropped it in the lake. 

"You've got a sister? I'm so jealous, I've always wanted a sibling."

"Trust me James, they're rubbish." Sirius said. 

"Yeah, but you've got a brother. A sister, that's entirely different."

Peter let their words wash over him. In the upper left corner, right below the painstakingly careful crayon message from Elsie pleading him to write her every day, there was a new message. 'Welcome to Hogwarts! -JP' James Potter. Only Peter couldn't imagine when he'd done it. 

When he looked up to catch James' eye, the other boy grinned and winked. 

Just like that, Peter found religion.

*  
The thing about practicing faith, or maybe just practicing friendship, or maybe just boyhood, is that it requires certain sacrifices. Don't eat meat. Don't cut your hair. Cut off all your hair. Sever your ties to material goods. Sever your ties to your dignity. 

They are fourteen, on fire. 

Peter stands in the middle of their dorm dressed in Elsie's old Christmas dress. It tugs at practically everything as he teeters in James's mothers heels and tosses his new long red hair over his shoulder. 

"No, I shan't go out with you James Potter," his high falsetto sounds nothing at all like Lily Evans, "You never eat your green beans and you smell!"

Sirius had fell off his bed in hysterics the moment Peter had pulled the dress out of his trunk. His laughter had quieted before but picks up dramatically now, wheezing with it as he clutches his sides. 

Meticulously polite, Remus stifles his own mirth behind his hand as he watches Sirius with growing concern. 

"She'd not say that, no fair Pete!" James looks genuinely upset. 

Peter never wants to see him hurt again. He stuffs the feeling down, down, down. "She would, too! You always make me eat your green beans." 

James' flush turns his face into a blood-red sunrise. Peter pushes it down, down, down. "That's not the point!"

"Snivellus eats his own green beans." How Sirius manages to get a complete sentence out in between the peals of laughter Peter doesn't know. Though he's not exactly paying attention either. 

The sunrise disappears and a storm front takes its place. 

"I can do anything that greasy git can. Pete, gimme your green beans."

He's always hated green beans anyways. One less thing to pretend. 

"Just stop putting them on my plate to begin with." Peter grumbles. 

"Put them on Evans'." Sirius suggests, waggling his eyebrows. 

Immediately James puffs up in Lily's defense. With a war cry he launches himself at Sirius and they're at it once more, tumbling each other across the floor. 

"They're going to hurt themselves some day." 

Remus shrugs, possibly more nonchalant than the situation warrants as Sirius's flailing limbs knock over one of the lamps. "As long as they don't beg me to fix it. I'm bollocks at healing. Hey, you want your hair back?" 

His new flaming red hair keeps falling in his face and poking his eyes. How do girls do this? "Yes please." 

*

Peter Pettigrew is on fire. Quite literally engulfed in flames. Searing hot, cook you inside out, set your skin to boils, blue and white flames over every inch of him. 

He's burning, burning, burning, and there will be nothing left of him to find. Not a single speck left because there is no surviving this. 

The pain of it overwhelms him until he can't remember ever feeling anything else. There has only been the searing pain, the white-blue dancing flames, the knowledge that this is how he begins, lives, ends. His mind becomes a gloriously blank thing with the sole purpose of forcing breath in and out of his husk of a body. There are no secrets, there is no war, there is no him. Just in and out. In and out. In and out. In and- 

"You've pushed him too far again, Bella." A raspy complaint breaks through the noise that had once been screaming, back when he could manage it. 

"Oops." The woman doesn't sound remotely remorseful. 

"Cut it out." Male, bored, dripping authority. "He's useless like that."

The pain stops. The fire ends. He hadn't known the fire could end. 

Peter lays in a crumpled heap on the blissfully cold floor. 

In and out. In and out. 

He is not burning. Clearing vision shows skin blotchy from sun and stress but unmarked by flame. If he had anything left in him, he'd cry. 

Pain, sharp and brief, right above his kidneys. 

"Now that you've seen what my wife can do with a wand," the bored voice (Rodolphus, a distant part of him supplies, the voice belongs to Rodolphus Lestrange), "Have you reconsidered spilling your guts, or will we have to do that for you?" 

In the background his wife (and if this is Rodolphus then that must be Bellatrix, and Peter, oh Peter is in so much trouble) giggles with glee at the thought of spilling Peter's guts.

The longer he goes without fire the clearer his fragmented thoughts become. 

He will have nothing useful to give to Dumbledore. 

"Well, made up your pathetic excuse for a mind?" 

He will tell them nothing. Remus isn't the only one capable of keeping a secret. 

"I don't think he wants to share with the class." Bellatrix coos. 

Peter keeps many secrets. Peter is a Secret Keeper. He will tell them nothing. 

In and out. In and out. In and out. 

He spits blood on Rodolphus' shiny polished shoes. 

Flames. 

*  
"Can I take it back?" Peter asks, miserable. 

Around them, the room lay wrecked. Trying the Animagus transformation in their dorm for the first time didn't make the list of their best ideas. Didn't top the one of all their worst ideas either, though. For whatever that's worth. It had taken ages to get deer James untangled from the floating candelabra. Partially because Remus didn't seem too keen on getting on the panicking stag's back and neither Sirius nor Pete had managed to figure out the whole 'changing back' business. 

James picks wax out of his hair and flicks it at Sirius who's busy itching imaginary fleas. "Don't think so, mate. All the books say it's a soul thing or something."

That does not help the misery threatening to eat him alive. 

Remus hasn't spoken yet, like the gravity of what they've all done for him has finally hit and leaves him incapable of forming sentences, but he moves from helping Sirius with the phantom fleas to sit next to Peter. The solid press of a body against his own couples with the feeling of Remus taking Pete's smaller, plump hands in his own and squeezing so hard Pete nearly loses feeling. 

"Didn't catch yours either, not like I could see around James's fat deer arse taking up the whole room." Sirius's excitement over the whole thing makes Peter feel petty and resentful. Of course Sirius can joke, he's a dog. He's useful and loyal and loved. Peter... Peter is... 

"He's a rat." The way Remus says it makes it sound like the most brilliant thing in the entire world. Pete supposes any willing change would sound brilliant to the boy who breaks himself apart once a month. "James, don't you see? He's a rat!" 

All Peter sees in James's face is bewilderment. 

He wants to turn back into the rat (something to do with the soul, the fucking soul) and drown himself. 

"A rat?" Sirius sounds skeptical. "I mean, no offense but what g-"

"The Willow." Remus breathes. "He can get you in." 

Remus looks like he could kiss Peter senseless right then and there. 

James actually does. 

All it takes is one sloppy and jubilant press of chapped lips and Peter has lost every thought he's formed in the last hour. 

The kiss lasts just long enough for Peter to start remembering why he should not ever kiss James Potter. Just as he makes an aborted move to push James off, James draws back and beams, just absolutely beams, as if Peter had just given him Lily Evans' hand in marriage. 

"Peter Herman Pettigrew, you brilliant peach of a man! You fantastic beautiful rat-soul wonder, you got us a way in!"

Peter's mind fills with James's lips and the taste of treacle tart and wind and mint toothpaste. He goes more than faintly pink. 

Sirius plops himself down on Pete's free side and snags an arm around Pete's waist. He grins wide at Peter before licking a sloppy line up the side of his neck. 

"What the bloody hell, Sirius?" Peter complains, the moment he's been building in his head effectively shattered. 

"What? Remus has your hand and Jimbo here already kissed you. I am officially a dog now, y'know." 

"I'm giving you the plague next time I'm a rat." He scrubs a hand along his neck to rid himself of slobber. 

"What've I said about calling me Jimbo you prat?" 

They're all bickering again, James still with a hand on the back of Pete's neck as he uses the other to bat at Sirius's head. Sirius laughs and pushes him and soon they're all a pile of boy limps, tussling and swearing. Someone elbows him in the eye and he's pretty sure he's kicked someone's stomach. 

He's in love with all of them, every single one. He needs nothing else and he'll never need anything more. 

The quiet, still part of him repeats over and over: James Potter has just taken your first kiss. You beautiful, fantastic rat-soul wonder. Your first kiss came from James Potter. 

*  
They're fighting. Actually properly rowing with each other. It takes Peter by surprise. Marauders don't believe in in-fighting. It goes against the Code. Then again, Sirius has rather thrown the whole Code out the window, hasn't he? 

"He's waking up alone right now, Black." James hisses and the words physically push Sirius backwards a few steps. 

They're in the awning outside Dumbledore's office, just the three of them, as dawn creeps along the edges of the sky. 

For his part Sirius does look shamed, but he's got that stubborn set to his jaw that Peter knows leads to their worst kinds of trouble. What trouble could get worse than this mess? Sirius has outdone himself. 

"Alone, Sirius, for the first time in years, and it's your bloody fault!"

The jut of Sirius's jaw could cut ice. "It was one bloody mistake, Prongs, come on!" 

"Mistake?" Peter has never seen James look this furious. Not after Lily chose Snape (Snape, sitting in Dumbledore's office right now, Snape, who could get into the Willow) over him. Not ever. "Forgetting your Charms homework is a mistake. Getting us caught by Filch is a mistake. This? This is a fuck up. This is betrayal."

A right-hook would've hurt Sirius less. He recoils, and for a moment Peter almost goes to comfort him. 

"The tree was just supposed to smack him around until he kept his fat nose out of our damn business. No one got hurt." 

"No thanks to you! Merlin, Sirius. Don't you get it? Moony would've ripped him apart!" 

"Fat loss that would've been. One less smarmy asshole in the world." 

"You would make Remus a murderer, then."

Even said quietly, the words suck all the oxygen out of the room. 

It's clear from the destroyed look on Sirius's face he hadn't thought of it like that. 

"You would make him a murderer. I don't know what he'll forgive of you, Black, but I know what I won't."

"Prongs," Sirius sounds plaintive. 

He reaches out. James jerks away. 

"No. Marauders first. That's the Code, Black. Us, then everyone else. He trusts us. Remus trusts us. He trusts you. You'd make your own goddamn boyfriend a murderer." 

"James," Sirius sounds desperate, wrecked. 

"You apologize to him." James: furious, beautiful, burning. Peter can't look away. "You apologize to him, and you fucking mean it, Black."

"Please!" 

An ocean has opened up between the pair of them. Peter never thought this possible. 

"Apologize! Once he's talking to you again, then maybe I will too."

"James, please, just-"

"Come on, Pete." James turns his back to Sirius and Peter watches Sirius crumple. "We'll wait somewhere else."

James stalks off. 

Peter lingers, torn by the ruin on Sirius's face, but in the end who he'd choose was never a question. He mouths a quick 'sorry' to his torn apart friend. 

James leaves. 

Peter follows. 

*  
"This is getting boring." Bellatrix complains. "He knows nothing."

They have left him in a heap on the floor, ignoring him as thoroughly as a scuff on the tile. Peter watches the whole scene from somewhere just left of his body, his mind a floating numb thing incapable of functioning. He can no longer remember how long they have had him here. 

"He knows something." Rodolphus sounds confident in the easy way James always does. 

James. Peter thinks he remembers James. Glowing, beautiful, lovely. 

"The Dark Lord wants the Potters. He can give them to us."

Bellatrix snorts, proud features doubtful. 

Peter blinks blood out of his eyes. Several of his broken ribs protest as he breathes. 

"He tagged along behind Potter like a lost puppy at Hogwarts." The third man, Mulciber- must be Evan Mulciber- shares Rodolphus's confidence. "We'd never break Black. No one's seen Lupin in months. This one, this one we can break." 

A small shameful part of Peter almost thinks of giving up Remus's position with the werewolves, just for the chance at some relief. They'd never break Remus. Remus has always been stronger than the rest of them put together. 

As soon as it has come, Peter forces the thought away. No. He will betray none of them. Marauders, then everyone else. 

Peter will not, must not, break. He will not, must not, cannot, give James up. Not for anything. Not for anyone. Not ever. 

Marauders, then everyone else. 

James. James, then everyone else. 

“Maybe pain’s not the way to go with this one.” Rodolphus sounds thoughtful. 

Peter will not give up James. 

“Say, doesn’t he have a sister?”

Elsie. 

*

Elsie Pettigrew sits on her brother’s small rickety bed. Her sharp chin juts out as if it has as much to prove as the rest of her. Her hands make fists of the threadbare quilt. She glares at the back of Peter’s head. 

“Why can’t I help?” She demands. 

Peter will not look at her. Sirius has just dropped by, haggard and half-starved, fresh off some mission that Peter doesn’t know the details for. He never knows the details. What is the point of a secret resistance if one loose tongue spills it all? Snivellus can brew Veritaserum in his sleep. They can’t risk it. 

“No.” Peter says. He has had five thousand nightmares of Elsie dead. Five thousand nightmares of his baby sister dying. He knows enough of pain to give them gruesome detail. “No.”

“You’re helping!” 

“I’m twenty, Els, I can make my own decisions.” 

Over the past few weeks, they have received five different pieces of Benjy Fenwick. 

“I’m fourteen, I can make mine!”

“You’re still a kid!”

“Oh, and you’re so grown up?” She sounds hurt and Peter hates that it’s his fault, that he hurt her, but he’ll take hurt feelings over missing limbs any day. 

“More grown up than you.” He retorts. 

“I’ve seen your papers, Pete.” She says, her voice suddenly as small and trembling as Wormtail. 

Peter turns to look at her and immediately wishes he hadn’t. 

Elsie Pettigrew looks exactly like Lily and Alice do when they clutch their newborn children during meetings. The same look Fabian and Gideon share when passing around photos of their six small nephews, their once more pregnant baby sister. The look of someone with everything to lose and no surefire way to ensure it’s safety. It settles too well on Elsie’s sugar-spun features, still growing into themselves. 

Peter never wanted this for her. He never wanted this for any of them. Then again, sometimes the most important choices get made for you. 

Elsie’s face teeters on the verge of tears. “People are dying. I want to help.”

“It will help me if you stay as far away from this as possible.” Peter says as he crosses the small room to wrap her in his arms as if he could protect her from everything with this action alone. 

“What if,” Elsie’s voice wobbles as much as her face. 

“Don’t think it, it won’t happen.”

“Pete what if you die? What if you die and I could’ve done something and then you’re not here any more?”

Peter clings to her, grip too tight though neither of them mention it. 

“Easy, I won’t die.”

“You can’t promise that, you can’t.”

“Just did, didn’t I? You know I keep my promises.” 

She takes a suspiciously watery breath and sniffles into his shirt, clearly unconvinced. 

“They can’t kill me, Els. I’m magic after all.”

Neither of them say: so are they. Neither of them say: don’t make promises you can’t keep. Neither of them say: war does not care about the remnants it creates. 

They cling to each other. They are untouchable. 

*

When Peter opens his eyes, he is in hell. 

He closes them immediately. 

When Peter opens his eyes, he is in hell. 

He squeezes his eyes shut, counts to ten, disassociates. Repeats. 

When Peter opens his eyes, he is in hell. 

Evan Mulciber holds Elsie by the hair. 

Peter wishes for white-hot fire and a death that never ends. He wishes for knives in his flesh and parts carved out of him, for every gruesome detailed promise Bellatrix has made. 

Evan Mulciber has his baby sister by the hair. 

Peter lunges to his feet, only his body doesn’t move. He throws himself at Evan, he yells for Elsie to leave, leave, leave, only- he stays a crumbled heap on the floor.  
Has he disassociated too well? He cannot leave Elsie in that monsters hands he knows all too well what Evan can do, he dated Mary he almost loved Mary and this is Elsie this is his Elsie how had they found her Peter had been so damn careful - but no, he can still blink. The tears wash his face with salt. 

He has no escape from this. 

She has no escape from this. 

“Pete? P-Pete wh-what’s going o-o-on?” Elsie’s terror drains the color from the room, washes out his last speck of hope. 

“Sorry, sweetheart, your brother hasn’t felt much like talking today.” Evan coos, fucking coos, and Peter wants to bash his teeth right in. 

“Actually, I don’t think he’s said a single word the entire time we’ve hosted him here.” Rodolphus’s honey drawl of a voice sets Peter’s teeth on edge. “A shame, really. We’ve been so eager to speak with him.”

“P-Pete, what happened t-to your f-f-face?” 

“I did.” Bellatrix appears at Evan’s elbow, runs a fingers down the side of Elsie’s face. 

Whatever Body-Bind Hex they’ve got on him almost breaks and Peter makes an aborted lunge for his sister. He succeeds only in breaking his own nose and Evan roars with laughter. 

“Now that we’ve had our little family reunion,” Rodolphus’s voice carries over the sound of Evan’s hysterics. “It’s time for business.”

Rodolphus kicks Peter over onto his back and the pain of his broken ribs grating against his organs overwhelms him. 

He passes out. 

Not for long, though, because before the pain has faded from the edges of his mind the sound of Elsie’s terrified screaming jars him back to consciousness. 

Elsie has a pair of fresh cuts across her cheekbones. Deep enough to scar, to need a medic, but nothing to bleed her out. Peter hates that he knows that. He hates that he now knows what Elsie looks like when she’s breaking. 

“As I was saying,” Rodolphus sounds like a nanny running out of patience with a slow child. “Business. No more of this fucking around, no more of this silent treatment you think you’re oh so spectacular at. You’re going to tell us what you know.”

Behind Rodolphus, Elsie’s sobs compose a symphony that systematically fractures the walls in his resolve. Peter has always hated the orchestra.

“You’re going to talk. Every time you don’t, every time you lie, your sister loses a finger. After that, her toes. After that, we move on to limbs.”

“No.” Peter’s voice rips from him and falls to the ground, shattered. 

“Oh, he does talk. I was wondering if he’d lost it entirely, between all the screaming and years sucking Potter’s dick.”

Peter ignores Bellatrix. His entire life force focuses on Elsie. 

“No.” He repeats. “Don’t hurt her.”

“I don’t think he believes us, love.” Rodolphus says to his wife. “Evan. He’s been here two days hasn’t he? Take two of her fingers.”

Elsie screams. 

Peter is in hell. 

*

The funniest thing about leaving a place for the last time: it doesn’t feel any different. The train was pulls away from the Hogsmeade platform the same way it always does. Everyone crowds to their normal compartments. They speak about the same things as always. The same people stop by to say goodbye for the summer- only this time they say goodbye forever, likely. 

They’re in the same compartment, their compartment, as always. Shutters drawn, as always. Music plays tinily from the small Muggle radio Remus smuggled in years ago, as always. Everything is the same. Everything is different. 

Sirius is collapsed across Remus’s lap, James has his head pillowed in Lily’s. Peter sits alone. 

Lily breaks the silence first. Peter wishes there wasn’t a part of him that hates her. 

“It’s all real now, isn’t it?”

Peter watches Remus’s face shutter. 

“They’re not just schoolyard squabbles any more. It’s war now, isn’t it?”

“War hasn’t officially been declared.” Remus says quietly, as if they haven’t known for ages, as if they haven’t all picked sides. 

“I don’t think it’s going to be that kind of war.” Lily looks at Remus not with pity, but concern. Worry. Out of all of them, it’s Remus and Lily that have the most to lose. 

“We’re going to fight.” James says. “We can’t just let them win.”

Peter’s stomach sinks to his toes. Never in his life has he considered himself a fighter. Combative magic always gave him problems and defensive was hardly any better. Hell he could barely even throw a punch. He didn’t want to fight in a war. It hardly seems like something he would survive. But if the others, if James, joined the fight, how could he sit idly by? 

“Of course we are.” Sirius sounds brusque, his voice already a punch. Peter wonders if he’s thinking about all his family on the other side. A burned bridge was still a bridge, once. 

“I’ve been talking with Professor McGonagall,” Lily runs a hand through James’s hair. Peter wishes he could do that, just once. “She says, if I’m interested, if I find any like-minded individuals, to send her an owl.”

“Then that’s what we’ll do.” Remus says. His eyes remain trained on Sirius, who looks like a live wire. 

The relief on James’s face is palpable, even in profile. 

Peter has things to lose, too. And he’s never been a fighter. 

James twists to look at Peter, expectant. Hopeful. 

Peter would raze cities to the ground to have those eyes on him. He would bring down the sky. 

“Yeah.” Peter says. The sun shines bright from James’s face. “That’s what we’ll do.”

He would fight in a war. 

*

Elsie sits trembling in the farthest corner from the door. His silence has cost her four fingers. The blood soaks her dress. Her eyes stare off into nothing. This image will haunt him for the rest of his life. 

They’ve been left alone here in this dry and frigid place. Where their tormentors have gone, Peter doesn’t rightfully care. They are alone and blood soaks through the fabric of his baby sister’s dress. 

Making sure not to breathe too deeply, Peter drags himself across the room to reach her. They’ve taken his wand. Wandless Magic has never been his forte (complex magic in general has never been his forte) and he’s always been rubbish at Healing. 

Blood clots on her hand. Blood soaks the fabric of her dress. 

If there was a way to transfer it on to himself, to take and take and take until she sat before him bright-eyed and whole, he would do it in a heartbeat. He would do it a thousand times over. 

She is barely sixteen. 

When he gathers her to him, she flinches back and screams. 

Peter fractures. 

“Els, Els Bells, it’s me, it’s Pete, it’s Petey.” He holds his hands away from her body as his fracture lines grow. 

“P-p-p-“ her teeth start chattering so hard she can barely speak. 

“Yeah, yeah Els, Pete.” 

She breaks and begins to sob, her whole body shaking with the noise. 

Peter gathers her pieces together in his arms, holds her to his bruised and broken body with no regard for the way it protests, and wills, begs, pleads, for his magic to make her whole again. He has lived through ten thousand nightmares of Elsie bleeding. 

His magic seeps into his sister’s skin slowly, and as it dances across her wounds Peter can almost see it. For the first time in his life he wishes he didn’t have it at all. He wishes for a normal, Muggle life, with a baby sister healthy and whole and smiling and hating him for stealing all the good puddings. For a life without this bloody war and his bloody friends and infuriating gorgeous brilliant James Potter for whom he has thrown himself and his sister straight into a pit full of vipers. 

Elsie’s sobs wrack through his body like a physical blow. 

Peter longs for the fire. 

“W-w-w-what d-do they w-want?” Elsie asks once her skin has knit itself back together, once there are no tears left in her to spill. 

Peter clutches as close as he can manage without pushing his ribs into his organs. When he speaks, the strength in his own voice surprises him. “They want to know where James and his family are.”

“Why?” Elsie’s voice is a rasp. 

The weight of everything pushes down against him. Oh, how he wishes for fire. “Because they want them dead.”

*

“It’s got to be you, Wormtail.” 

Peter could think of ten thousand reasons it absolutely does not need to be him, can run through a long list of better candidates for this. 

James sits across from him, the lines of his face equal parts worn and earnest. Behind him, Lily paces with a crying Harry. 

Peter holds his arms out, offering Lily relief, because it will give his hands something to do. He’s always been good at calming babies, knew just what to do for Elsie when she wailed like this, and he aches for a familiar task. Lily hands her child over gratefully before collapsing on the couch. 

“Sirius would be better at it.” Peter says once Harry is in his arms. He bounces the crying baby gently and focuses his attention on making silly faces and little magical smoke animals to dance around Harry’s head. 

“Sirius is too obvious. They’ll go for him first.” James doesn’t even sound disappointed and part of Peter fills with shameful glee. For once he’d beaten out the brother James had chosen. 

“Sirius suggested you, actually.” Lily says from the couch. She has an arm thrown over her face and she looks in desperate need of a nap. 

“Really?” Peter asks before he can help himself. Sirius likes him well enough sure, but he can hardly imagine his friend volunteering him for anything much less something as important as James and Lily’s Secret Keeper. As Harry’s Secret Keeper. Sirius Black looks at Harry the same way he used to look at Remus, like something infinitely and immeasurably precious. 

“Yes.” James says in a voice that leaves no room for argument. 

It stuns Peter into silence. For a moment he stares blankly at his best friend. Then Harry begins to fuss again, pulling at his shirt front and crying for ‘nanimuls’.

“Why is it such a surprise?” James asks as Lily follows up with a firm, “We know you’re not the spy.”

“I just— I guess I didn’t have myself pegged as your first choice.” Or even their second. Had Remus turned them down? Or maybe it’s just that they’ve not seen Remus to ask him. The werewolves keep Moony busy these days. 

James looks pained. “Pete, Pete why wouldn’t you be?”

Sparing himself the humiliation of seeing more pity in his best friends eyes, Peter shifts his attention back to Harry. “I dunno. Because I’m me.”

“Stop talking rubbish, Peter Herman Pettigrew.” Lily sounds so stern for a moment Peter assumes she’s chastising Harry. “You’re more than enough.”

“Listen to my wife mate, she was top of our class.”

“I was not.”

“Well you should’ve been. Still think you should contest it.”

“James, honestly. Emmeline won that fair and square.”

“Bullocks, she stole that title just like she stole Dorcas away.”

“I don’t think getting married and moving across country with her counts as ‘stealing Dorcas away’.” Peter offers as he makes two little deer frolic around Harry’s head. When they’re talking like this it’s so much easier to pretend they’re still children and nothing has gone wrong. It’s so much easier to make believe that friends moving house is their biggest problem. “Besides, you’re just cross she didn’t join Puddlemore United.”

“Et tu, Pete? You’re damn right I’m cross she left me for the Holyheads, Puddlemore had the season in the bag with her on the pitch! Mrs. and Mrs. Vance have done me a grievous wrong and I fully intend to air my concerns at the next meeting.”

“We are so far from the point right now, darling. Can we focus please before death literally comes knocking on the door?”

That sobers the room up right fast. 

“We trust you, Pete.” James says softly. “I trust you. There’s no one else I’d rather have keeping my family safe.”

Well, shit. It’s just like that isn’t it? James Potter trusts him. 

Peter thinks, I was never really going to say no was I?

Peter thinks, I have loved you since I was eleven. 

Peter says, “Yeah, Prongs. Of course I’ll do it.”

James Potter beams. 

*

By the time Elsie has fallen asleep, Peter has lost himself in the first and only moral dilemma he’s ever faced. 

They will kill his baby sister little by little if he doesn’t start talking. 

They will kill the Potters if he does. 

Elsie, or James. One life or three. It’s the devil’s arithmetic and Peter has never fancied himself good at numbers. 

He can remember holding Elsie at the hospital. 

He can remember the press of James’s lips against his. 

He knows Elsie’s first word, where she took her first steps, the first time she had said his name. 

He knows James’s favorite color, the way he takes his eggs, how he prefers to sleep. 

How was he supposed to choose between siblings, divide lots between precious things? 

Peter clutches Elsie close to him and rocks her back and forth. 

In all of his life, he has always known she would be the child to make their parents proud, the one who’d truly do something that mattered. Elsie had the sort of integrity that he’d always aspired to but never achieved, that strong willed knowledge the world could be fixed if she pushed it hard enough. She and James had that in common. 

James or Elsie. Either way he’s a dead man. He could no sooner live in a world without James than he could a world without Elsie. One vital organ for another. His lungs or his heart: pick one and cut it out. 

He remembers the look of sheer wonder and bewilderment on James’s face when he’d told them all Lily was expecting; the pure awe at the chance to bring life into this broken world. He can recall every instance of James putting himself between Peter and some bully when they were younger. 

Elsie whimpers in her sleep. 

He thinks; I could live a thousand lifetimes and never deserve either of them. 

He thinks: a piece of enchanted fabric once told me I was brave. 

He thinks: there can be no hell greater than this. 

Peter rocks her back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, and makes his decision. 

*

They come back. 

Peter has no illusions on his survival rate. 

Before they can tear a precious thing from his arms, Peter hands them his still beating heart. 

“I know where they are.”

Elsie will not look at him. She will not look at him. But she will survive this even if Pete won’t. 

Bellatrix’s laughter will haunt his thoughts for the rest of his natural life. 

*

The way he figures it, he is already dead. 

The way he figures it, life as rat suited him far better than humanity ever had. 

*

“James and Lily!” Peter yells in a street full people. “James and Lily, how could you Sirius?”

Sirius Black throws himself like a live grenade. 

Jokes on him. Peter already detonated, sitting in a cellar covered in his sister’s blood. 

Peter doesn’t see Elsie on the street corner. 

*

Family never did count as a religion. 

But people have become martyrs for less. 

A street lined with bodies lies in ruins. 

A broken man stands in the middle and laughs and laughs and laughs and laughs. 

One rat missing a toe pauses at the body of a blonde girl with only eight fingers. 

The man laughs and laughs, tears coasting down a face that looks all at once too old and too young. 

A rat scurries away, into the night.


End file.
